Beer: Ratings & Reviews

Reviews by BigBlacke:

Thanks to a buddy of mine I am finally trying this one. Pours and opaque black with a 1/2 inch tan frothy head that simmers down to a ring. Smells of bittersweet chocolate, wood and coffee. Yeti tastes of dark roasted malt, mocha and wood. Yeti has a creamy mouthfeel with low carbonation. I find drinkability to be high due to my shear respect for the brew. Love it.

More User Reviews:

Appearance - This beer is darker than dark with a beautiful, full head. The head is very dark as well, a solid milky brown I'd say, and laced the hell out of my class. It was a beauty shop in the best sense.

Smell - This bouquet is a nice mix of roasty malts, coffee grounds, and dark chocolate from the finest shop in San Francisco. The raw coffee grounds and dark chocolate work incredibly well together, giving this one a very bitter nose.

Taste - Oh, this is really good. The notes from the nose are here in spade, but the roasted malts are super-juiced and are much sweeter at the tongue. It's a dark sweetness, again like chocolate, maybe mixed with some brown sugar. The alcohol, which I didn't pick up at the nose, is very much present at the taste. This is very rich and has what I call a "pre-aged" flavor, meaning that it takes on that good, syrupy flavor that you get after aging a strong, complex stout.

Mouthfeel - This medium to full-bodied stout is slick in the mouth and very bitter. The big sugars take the bite out of the bitterness and the huge alcohol warms the throat. All the flavors play amazingly well in the mouth. This has what I consider to be a perfect balance of dark, bitter malts, light leafy hop dryness, mouth-puckering sugars, and a sharp but mature alcohol warmth.

Drinkability - This was beer, dinner, and dessert all rolled into one. It was incredibly drinkable for such a big ADS.

Comments - Do not age this beer. Drink as is for best results.

Update - It had been five years since I've had this beer before they started selling it in SoCal so thought I'd give my original review an update.

I wrote before about how dark and beautiful the head was but just can't emphasize it enough. It is absolutely one of the most beautiful heads I have ever seen and it sticks around for eternity. As you drink the beer the film leaves thick rings on the inside of your mug almost like ring on a tree bark.

The only other thing that I would add, which I mentioned at the end of my original review, is that although this style of beer is good for aging, this should be consumed upon purchase. You age a big, dark, malty beer like this to bring out the sugars but the sweets here are so well-developed that there's no need to hold this in a cellar.

A - This beer is almost completely opaque, but not completely black. It pours a dark dark chocolate brown with visible viscosity. Even the head is dark, with the color and texture of a chocolate mousse. In true stout fashion, the head doesn't linger long, but the ring that persists leaves a lovely thick lacing. Everything about the presentation screams decadence.

S - Dark chocolate and coffee grounds are apparent even before taking a whiff. There's toffee and caramel mingling with some warm, scotchy aromas of smoke and booze.

T - Bitter coffee and baker's chocolate lead the onslaught, with a soft bed of sweet and toasty caramels quickly following. There's a peaty flavor reminiscent of a fine scotch that blends with cleverly masked but lingering alpha acids into something beautifully pungent and earthy. The sweetness is thoroughly satisfying, but never cloying. Let this beer slosh around your pallet and you could get lost in the subtly unfolding grains.

M - This is a heavy beer. Let me repeat that, this is a heavy beer. It fills the mouth and coats the tongue with a dense, oily sensation that positively commands you to stop and pay attention. Carbonation is present, and helps to buffer the sugars, but any tingle is absorbed with the sheer thickness of the malts. Drinking more than one is a herculean effort.

O - In a world overpopulated with coffee/chocolate/vanilla/cream etc stouts, a traditionally brewed stout that evokes all of those flavors with nothing but barley, hops, and yeast is a breath of fresh air. The Yeti exudes a regal, ancient quality, one that really evokes the halls of czarist Russia that gave the style its name. The generous allotment of American hops counteracts the overpowering sweetness that so many Impy Stouts have, and what results is a complex, sophisticated offering perfectly represents the style while pushing it in a new, more evolved direction.

Poured a pitch black with no light shoowing thru even when held up to a strong light with a mocha colored creamy two fingered head that took its time to settle leaving a ring of lace behind.Big bitter chocolate aromas along with an underlying earthiness from a nice dose of hop thrown in obviously with a beer so dark you are also gonna get a big roasty aroma as well.What I like best about this beer is the fact its no overly sweet like a alot of Impy souts are sue u get the chocolate and roasted elemants but what a great earthy/dry fifnsh gives this beer such balance making it just so damn drinkable.Creamy mouthfeel this beer glides down easy,another gem from Great Divide their big beer kick immense ass and I will keep enjoying them.

Wow I thought this beer was categorized as a Imperial Stout but a double stout it is and rightly so,damn good.

Appearance: Chocolate Velvet with assertive lacing. Pitch black. Dark brown head like the bottom of a cup of Turkish coffee. The bubbles are just plain fun to watch disperse after the pour. Like a herd of wildebeests crossing the Nile during Gator mating season, these little black-brown bubbles scatter from the head back into the brew from which they came.

Yeti pours scorched engine oil black with a fast disappearing, dark mocha head into my uber large snifter. When swirled and agitated a bit, the head returns and retains well. The lacing is rather sticky with vertical lines of small dots.

Very toasty malts and a strong hop presence lead me to smell notes of chewing tobacco. Really strong chewing tobacco. Other aromas include baseball glove leather, anise, cigar, dark chocolate, mocha-latte, and roasted peanuts. This is an original smell that makes me excited to imbibe.

At first, that chewing tobacco tang combines with a fine roasted malt flavor that really bombards the bitter receptors of my palate. I have to believe that that bitter tang is also the result of copious hops in this brew. As that initial tang washes away, a nice balance of toffee, coffe, and dark chocolate flavors emerge. Wow, this is right up there with Storm King for huge hop Character in an Imperial Stout.

A thrilling combination of bitter tang and a coating, rich fullness make for a very unique mouthfeel. It's just a little more aggressive than I would generally like in an IS MF, but I rate it high for excitement and originality.

I will certainly try Yeti again, but I might age my next bottle for awhile. This particular bottle had roughly seven months on it and it still felt raw and aggressive on my palate. I generally prefer slightly more mellow Imperial Stouts and I imagine this would turn into that with a little more bottle time.

T: A thick, smooth moderately-strong flavors of unsweetened chocolate flavor, roastiness and coffee with some malt sweetness and molasses . There is a moderate hops bitterness and a citrus hops flavor. The balance is moderately towards the bitterness. The alcohol certainly does go unnoticed but it doesn't over well. The finish balanced between dry and sweet with a bitter chocolate aftertaste.

M: Full bodied with moderate carbonation that is made of fine bubbles give evne more of an impression of weight on the palate.

O: Well I've got a new favorite stout, it's been far to long since I've enjoyed a bottle of this world class stout. This beer has layers of rich flavor from dark grains giving chocolate and coffee with some sweetness the balanced by a firm hops bitterness. this beer just brings ton of flavor sip after delightful sip.

Thick and robust with lots of roasty, bitter chocolate, wood, the alcohol is present but doesn't dominate, and the finish and dry and very bitter from the massive hop character. Classy, right along with the entire Yeti series.

Another cold day here in Chicago and I wanted to warm myself up. Picked this brew up at Binny's in the South Loop. Don't know that much about Great Divide but selected this because of it's reputation. The label would certainly not have enticed me but never judge a beer...

A: Poured from a bomber, I got a nice 2 finger head. Beautiful golden brown head that started clinging to the glass immediately. Slick and black looking liquid. A hint of red in the black and hardly a touch of ruby on the edges against the light - dense stuff. A thin head remained throughout and the lacing was fantastically fine.

S: Lovely deep, stale roasted malt. There's a caramel malt sweetness there too. I can smell the alcohol but it's not very dominating considering the ABV. Coffee came across dominantly in the roastiness but some tartness with the alcohol like black cherry.

T: First taste was a very big malt followed by a bite that wasn't a tart fruit, it was actually a hefty clout of hops. Very sour hop finish with a malt breadiness. Very nicely orchestrated progression and very enjoyable. When I have had brews that try to deliver massive malt and hop, one tends to dominate. With this brew, the malt is destined to win (because it's a Stout) but because the two play out at different times in the progression, you feel like they both get to have their 15 minutes of fame without butting heads. I think this qualifies it as well balanced in my book. I had a feeling that I would enjoy this as it warmed up and I wasn't wrong. Just got deeper and more malty but kept a nice hop bite that makes the finish active and leaves a hop aggressiveness in the mouth that then welcomes the return of the malt. This beer just really works for me.

M: Full bodied, smooth and creamy. Light on the carbonation. Perfect.

D: It's obviously a heavy beer but very drinkable - knocked it back way too quickly and felt the rosie cheeks and buzz. Would love to drink one after another but the high ABV makes that impossible.

I was starting to despair about not finding Stouts that I truly enjoyed but, I have broken my cold spell - this is my new go-to IRS.

On tap at the Lost Dog Lounge in Ithaca, NY, inexplicably served in a plastic pint glass (whose shockingly effective insulation made it really, really hard to warm up).

Very thin dark tan head (par for the course on a Russian Imperial Stout with this much alcohol), but it definitely stuck around, even as I held my beer for twenty minutes or so to warm it up. Very nice lacing on the glass (well, plastic), and a dark, inky, opaque near-black.

Nice toffee and caramel aroma with some darker coffee and chocolate hiding back there. A little bit of herbal hops back there, too, and some nonspecific fruitiness. A big, pleasing smell overall.

Huge malty, toffee flavor, secondary on the chocolate and coffee flavors. The finish is beautiful; the alcohol and hops take it from an incredibly sweet brew to a nice, crisp dryness that lingers with some herbal flavors. Definitely a big, thick brew that coats the mouth and the tongue; very satisfying.

Big, tasty, and gets a lot right as far as I'm concerned. I would, however, definitely consider this a food beer. The first time I had it (from a bottle, not on tap), it was with barbecued spare ribs, and it was just about the best beer/food combination ever. On its own, it's a little harder to down, especially because it's not as much of a dessert beer as something like Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout.